Men of the Year, 2010

Dancing Near the Stars

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"I must have hit it a little too hard last night," the Situation leers. Karina ignores him.

They goof around for the ET cameras, pretending to interview each other, and then the crew shoots them dancing. The Situation looks vulnerable, executing a tentative quick-step, trying as hard as he can not to blow it with people watching.

I've agreed to leave them alone once the rehearsal starts. The Situation has invited me to join him in Vegas tomorrow night; he's doing a personal appearance at the Hard Rock. I have been assured that things will be crazy, like Beatlemania crazy, and it'll be good material for my article. "You might even walk out of there with a new girlfriend," Mike Petolino told me. ("Hell, yeah," the Situation said, as if already picturing the fine ladies he will re-gift me.)

So I catch a flight, and when I land, I get an e-mail from Mike Petolino:

We are not coming
Last minute, mike realized he didn't have the dance down and he made the call to stay and dance tonight, tomor morn and night-

So sry brother
He does not want to fail in this competition so he had to make the call

I walk around the Strip for a night. Having heard that there's a Vegas line on Dancing with the Stars, I will consider finding a sports book that takes reality-TV action and placing a spiteful bet on Rick Fox, but I don't. It still seems, at the time, like a mistake to bet against the Situation.

As it turns out, it wouldn't have been. A few weeks later, the Situation shanks the Argentine tango—he basically just bench-presses Smirnoff's body while she does the lion's share of the actual dancing. He takes the judges' criticism hard—Tonioli describes his performance as "a terrible mess"—and storms off the set.

"I was upset," he tells an US Weekly reporter who corners him while he's out in the parking lot, smoking and seething. "I tried so hard. I really did. I changed my haircut; I don't know." In a pretaped interview that airs twenty-four hours later, during the results show, he declares himself "done with this" and complains that the judges are "so unpositive," both of which are probably un-good moves. That same night, he stands for elimination opposite Bristol Palin, and America votes to send him home.

Before this happens, I schedule a follow-up phone interview with the Situation. He misses the appointment. In a way, this is for the best. I spent the day with the Situation and never actually saw his abs in person, but I still had a characteristically Situationesque experience: He fucked me (over) and never called me again.